The Context: a weekly podcast about why things happen.

On March 4, twenty one mayors from the state of Florida wrote to debate moderators demanding that they ask Republican Senator Marco Rubio a question about climate change. “It would be unconscionable,” they wrote, “for these issues of grave concern for the people of Florida to not be addressed in the upcoming debate you will be hosting in the state.”

Why are these mayors – especially the mayor from Miami – so incensed about climate change? What danger does climate change pose to their cities? Were Senator Rubio was asked about climate change, so how did he answer?

Miami, Climate Change, and Marco Rubio – today on The Context.

Want to dig deeper? Here’s more information.

These are some of my sources, plus some great articles and things that you might enjoy.

This year – for the second year in a row – all twenty nominees in the acting categories for the Academy Awards were white.

Why? What about the other categories? What about the previous 86 years of Oscars? Who chooses the nominees in the first place, and how? Is this blatant racism, or is something more subtle happening in Hollywood?

#OscarsSoWhite? Today on The Context.

Want to dig deeper? Here’s more information.

These are some of my sources, plus some great articles and things that you might enjoy.

Here is the gist of a letter published by Bill and Melinda Gates on February 22, 2016: “Poverty is not just about a lack of money. It’s about the absence of the resources the poor need to realize their potential. Two critical ones are time and energy.”

But what does that mean? What kind of time and energy are we talking about? Who specifically is lacking time and energy? How big are these problems, and what are their consequences? And what can be done about it?

More data about energy and poverty

On February 16, a federal judge – at the request of the FBI – ordered Apple to unlock a phone belonging to the man who shot up an office party in San Bernardino, California in December 2015. Apple released an open letter challenging that order, claiming it would set a dangerous precedent.

Would it? What exactly is the FBI demanding that Apple do? What legal basis do they have for demanding it? How is this different from other requests they’ve made in the past? What’s really at stake here? What’s really going on?

The technological and legal implications, today on The Context.

Extra Reading

Want to read more about encryption, or the FBI’s order, or Apple’s position? Here are some of my sources, and some things that I didn’t have time to elaborate on in the podcast.

Parting Thoughts…

On February 11, 2016, researchers announced that they had directly observed gravitational waves for the first time. But what are gravitational waves? How exactly did we detect them? What does Einstein have to do with it? Why is any of this important?

This week we delve into the history and the science of gravitational waves.

Extra Reading

Want to read more about the discovery of gravitational waves? Here are some of my sources, and some things that I didn’t have time to elaborate on in the podcast.

Finally, about Fast Track/Trade Promotion Authority:

Citizens of the state of Iowa just participated in caucuses to choose their preferred nominees for President. New Hampshire will vote in a primary next week. But why is one a caucus and one a primary? And why do Iowa and New Hampshire vote first? How did we get this system?

This week we look at the origins of the US Presidential Primaries.

Extra Reading

Want to read more about the primaries? Here are some of my sources, and some things that I didn’t have time to mention in the podcast.

And one last thing: let’s talk about Senator Estes Kefauver (pronounced KEE-foh-ver):

In 2015, residents of Flint, Michigan discovered toxic levels of lead in their water supply. How did that happen? Who was responsible? In this episode, we go back half a century and tell the full story.

Extra Reading

Want to know more about what happened in Flint? Here are some of my sources, and some things that I didn’t have time to mention in the podcast.

FlintWaterStudy.org is the ultimate source for all water news coming out of Flint. If you really want detail, this site has all the detail you would ever need.

If there’s something happening in the world, The Context will to tell you why it’s happening: its immediate causes, its deeper origins, and its implications.

What, then, are the origins of this podcast?

My name is Joey Brunelle, and for the last two years I have made a podcast called Born Yesterday, in which I told interesting, little-known stories from history.

Born Yesterday was a lot of fun, but there was just something missing something. That something turned out to be relevance. As I produced episodes of Born Yesterday about the Aztecs or the history of the game Monopoly, I would hear about the ongoing war in Yemen, or the contraction of the Chinese economy, or the massive forest fires in Indonesia – and I realized I knew basically nothing about these things. And these are important things, things that affect people today — not people who lived a thousand years ago.

And while there’s plenty of information out there about what is happening, there isn’t a lot about why.

That the gap that The Context will fill. Every week I’ll take some news item and dig deep into its origins. I’m not here to tell you what I think about things, I’m here to arm you with comprehensible, need-to-know historical background so you can speak intelligently about things that are happening in our world.

For example, here are some episodes I have planned:

How long has there been animosity between Sunni and Shia Islam, and why?

How does China manipulate its currency – what does that even mean – and why do they do it?

How did North Korea become the peculiar state that it is, and how did they get nukes?

How did the War on Drugs start, and why?

A new episode of The Context will drop each Friday. You will be able to find episodes on iTunes, or on this blog (with notes or transcripts from each episode).

Also on the blog you can sign up for what I’m calling the Episode Footnotes — an email that I’ll send out with each new episode with some extra reading about that topic. It will include links to the best sources I used in researching, and also any interesting information that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Welcome to The Context.

January 11, 2016, 7:55 pmFebruary 18, 2016

Sign up for the Episode Footnotes

There's always more to say than what can fit in a single episode. So every week we'll compile some "extra reading" in our Episode Footnotes - for you overachievers out there.